sleepwello'nights

How relevant is this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/christophercoats/2013/12/12/how-real-is-greeces-oil-and-gas-future/ ? You may have to google it as I can't get the link to lead to the article.

As our banter is a bit off topic I'll bow out now. To try and look even saucier I'll start following the The Road To <10% Body Fat thread more diligently Thanks for the alt keys tip, thanks ♥ ♥

In reply to fru-gal, I echo your sentiments about this budget. It does seem to me that Osborne has used a tax increasing budget to start removing some of the complexities introduced by Brown and even out the playing field. Changes to taxation of dividends, simplification of VED, with a few sops like increasing IHT that probably didn't raise much tax in any case. He certainly seems to have gained some kudos as a political operator. I'm sure future budgets, in the run up to the next election, will be "give away" budgets.

Merci, ma petite Cherie.

Thanks to you and Neverwhere for pointing out that I could have saved a spreadsheet as an image and pasted the image in. I'll know if I need to paste a table in future. I only saw the paste from Word icon, so I used that. By the way BU are you as didactic on the other "fora" you inhabit. I much prefer to use the english plural form "forums". But then I'm not a pretentious teacher.

Really, you find a simple four column table difficult to follow?

I've ignored personal allowance as in my personal circumstances I have a mix of other businesses that I can use to utilise them and minimise my income tax liabilities. The business structures I have allow me flexibility in deciding whether to take income or not. Sure, I take your point that if a landlord has an employment then his property income will be taxed at higher rates and that the changes will have a more significant impact than would apply to my circumstances.

Apologies for the formatting. I've tried to paste a table from MS Word, but it hasn't formatted as it appears in Word. I'll try to reformat, please bear with me. Before you guys injure yourselves from over salivating you need to look at the overall effect which will depend on the typical size of a buy to let portfolio. I would think that most of renters anger is directed at overstretched landlords who cannot afford to properly maintain their properties. The example of the larger portfolio would indicate that the owners have given some thought to running it on a business footing with good contacts with local tradesmen for repairs. The example I've given is based on the more modest portfolio I held. The difference it would have made to me would have been insignificant. In a year or so as I step back from my businesses and indulge in retirement then the income would provide a nice supplement to my pensions and savings. Perhaps I'll snap up some of the bargains that you hope will result from the budget changes! Example Given from Quoted Post for one of the individuals Tax Payable Tax Payable Rental Profit 25,000 200,000 Personal Allowance -10,000 -10,000 Standard Rate -15000 3000 -31865 6373 Higher Rate -118135 47254 Additional Higher Rate -40000 18000 Mortgage Int Relief -35000 Income Tax 36627 Income after tax 163373 Rental Profit 25000 200,000 Mortgage Interest -175000 Income Tax 3000 -36627 Net Income 22000 -11627 The change as applied to my more modest portfolio of 3 properties Tax Payable Tax Payable Rental Profit 22500 36000 Personal Allowance Standard Rate -22500 4500 -31865 6373 Higher Rate -4135 1654 Additional Higher Rate Mortgage Int Relief -2700 Income Tax 5327 Rental Profit 22500 36000 Mortgage Interest -13500 Income Tax 4500 -5327 Net Income 18000 17173

I still don't get what billions and trillions of money is. I understand that a few million has a meaning but not the vast sums that governments and markets bandy around. Back to my basic and simplistic understanding. Money to an individual represents what his labour is worth, what goods he can consume with it, what consumption he can forgo to provide for future consumption. So, to provide for future consumption he saves money in a bank. Are the billions and trillions the total sum of unconsumed labour? Then what is the bank credit created from the fractional reserve? It was never past labour to be spent by the individual in the future. It never existed.

Tried that, thanks for the suggestion, it now tells me an error has occurred on the system please contact the Helpdesk. Ah well that's a job for tomorrow.

These enormous sums of money are meaningless. What do they actually represent? To an individual money has a meaning, it represents what his time is worth, what goods he can consume, what he needs to hold in reserve for unexpected events. But the amounts needed are relatively small. When you get to amounts in 10s of millions, let alone billions, they become meaningless, well they would to me. I don't think I could comprehend how long it would take me to spend it, and on what. My sense of value would be totally distorted. What on earth does $72 billion represent in reality?

I just tried to get my state pension estimate from the link to the pension service website. For some reason I can't enter some characters in lower case for my password. As the password is case sensitive it kind of stops me getting in. Is this a known problem or just another F#ck up by our joined up government in getting us online?

That seems OK to me. £55k per plot, What are build costs now, last time I was considering it my back of the fag packet calculations were £100 a sq ft. So a 1500 sq ft house would be approx. £200k. Is that so bad? Or have I misread the ad? Just read it a bit more carefully, 2 plots that's £110k each, with planning for two 2000 sq ft houses. So that's £110k + £200k = £310k. Still seems OK. What's the area like?

A silly thought; How do they actually pay back the loan? Do they actually have to give boxes full of €500 notes or a cheque or an electronic transfer? If they sent some Injin magic zeros who would know?

From the posts I've read by Damocles on here and on here and on Landlordzone as Lawcruncher; although I didn't realise he may be the same poster. He seems very conversant with Landlord and Tenant law. His exposition of the law is clear and concise, I've not noticed any bias in his posts skewing his opinion in favour of or against either landlord or tenant. What exactly is your problem with his contributions to this forum?

All this proves is that mortgagees are more confident that they can recover their loans without crashing the market. Perversely it is exactly the opposite of what I presume you are hoping for; that house prices will fall. I'm guessing that most of these repossessed properties will be sold to BTL investors.

How arrogant. Because not everyone agrees with your opinion you think we should clear off! I participate in this forum because I am interested in other peoples views, even if they are diametrically opposed to mine. That doesn't mean I consider my opinion and viewpoint to be the correct one and that all others are deluded or wrong. I found when studying that it often helped to read different books on a topic, by doing so it often gave an insight into the subject by viewing the topic from a different perspective. For what its worth I'm fairly ambivalent to the posturings and shenanigans our politicians engage in. The general direction I've seen in the UK over my lifetime is that standards of living have improved pretty steadily for most people I know. There are, and always will be worrying aspects and potential threats to our well being, by and large they haven't impacted on us too much. Although HPI is detrimental to some posters and may be the reason why they contribute so avidly, we enjoy one of the best standards of living in the world. That's not to say I'm complacent but there is little an individual can do, we have to leave most things to our societal institutions to do their best however woeful we may think some are. Muddlehead posted on here to get some opinions to help decide what to do. Why shouldn't he be able to without you telling him he's already made his mind up.

I think its a problem brought about by our social structure. If we go back to Victorian times say, then most people had to be productive to survive. Because we don't generally live a subsistence life style in the UK we have time to dwell on existential problems that if we were struggling to survive, not simply make ends meet, we wouldn't have time to gaze at our navels and wonder why we are dissatisfied with life.

I see you've all followed the link to "The History of Philosophy without any Gaps/Classical" then.

We all know the original intention behind the formation of the EU was a political union. The architects knew that it would take time to form, for peoples from each nation to regard themselves as European, rather then French, German, Polish, Greek, Macedonian...... Perversely more countries exist now as previous groups break up. Look at the Balkans and consider the strengthening swell of Scottish nationalism. A major step towards the dream of a United Europe was economic union. After all strong trade ties increase mutual dependency. It will take time, if it is to happen and there will be shocks on the way. Even now in the United Kingdom there are those who regard themselves as belonging to their region first, overall though most of us regard ourselves as British. Eventually those pesky foreigners will come round to our way of thinking.

I concur with ****-eyed Octopus's opinion. We're all small cogs in a big machine. We purchased our first house in the mid 1970s. Just after a housing boom that almost trebled house prices in a year, as I recall. Eighteen months after we purchased we sold our house for almost double what we'd paid. The alternative to buying for us was to live with one of our parents and put our name down on the housing list with a local authority and wait until we were allocated a council house. We stretched ourselves with each purchase, then as now each step became a bigger financial commitment but it was more sensible to leverage up with the largest mortgage we could afford. The financial wisdom at the time was that buying was the better option than renting. The rationale was if you rented then rents would increase in line with average wages whereas mortgage repayments would remain constant, barring interest rate changes. The private renting sector was regarded with suspicion, Rachman was we thought a typical landlord. The private renting sector did exist but was far smaller than it has now become. Fortunately as it turned out houses outpaced inflation although we had some very difficult years when interest rates soared and high inflation was the norm. We ran with the herd, and prospered with the herd. No special insight or deep analysis on my part. Indeed if renting had been less expensive than purchasing, more readily available, or more the norm; like in Germany for instance, then we probably would have rented. This makes me persona non grata, or even the devil incarnate to some posters on this site. Especially those whose high intelligence and detailed economic analysis have been unable to predict the timing of investment performance.

Okay so it seems that fiscal recycling can also be achieved through taxation. Shame human nature comes into play, when we feel we are paying too much tax we increase our efforts to avoid it, sometimes by doing less taxable work. From reading this thread it seems that Germany is being intransigent and Greece refuses to continue with the austerity policies that have been unsuccessful since they were introduced. From what I recall from the points raised, I haven't followed external links to articles, Greece refuses to increase the retirement age and sell off more public assets. They claim that increased austerity will increase deprivation, hospitals will not be able to purchase supplies, public employees will be sacked, pensions will not be paid, the populace in general will suffer hardship to ensure German banks are repaid the loans they lent recklessly. Austerity will further depress the already depressed economy, although it is in primary surplus. It is asserted the deficit is caused by interest charges. Are the Germans being as stupid as the thrust of this thread asserts? As I recall posters on this thread say Germany wants Greece to increase compliance with tax legislation, reduce the size of the public sector, increase VAT and raise the retirement age. The first two don't seem unreasonable to me accustomed as I am to life in the UK. Switching jobs from the public to the private sector should only have a marginal effect on employment, unless the public sector is as woefully efficient as Greece's detractors claim. Raising VAT will reduce demand and depress the official economy, it will switch more activity into the black economy and reduce tax receipts I would think, not in the creditor's best interests. Increasing retirement age, is that a big deal, we didn't object to that much in the UK did we.

Having now read through the posts on this topic, may I ask a question? Probably economics 101, anyway Varoufakis's exposition on the Bretton Woods system explained that included in its design was a facility to recycle surpluses. There would always be economies in deficit at some point in time and to sustain the global economy those in surplus had to use their surplus to support those in deficit. How were those surpluses recycled? Is it by the issuance of loans, which seems to be what I think the US does with the effect that economic financial gains from infrastructure projects the loans are used for return to the US and do not give financial benefit to the local population. Or by grants or foreign aid? There was a succinct summary of the Greek problem somewhere around page 400. It omitted what the Greek government spent the borrowed money on. Is the opinion of the poster who disagreed with the premise that the present situation is the fault of the lenders correct; pensions for civil servants and a bloated public sector? To couch my bewilderment in simple, if naïve terms, didn't the designers of the EU ever play Monopoly? The thrust of the argument seems to be that Germany has now collected all the money and the losing player is refusing to sell it its property.

I couldn't resist a peep at what your reply to my last post would be. We've strayed far from my original premise that despite hostility towards BTL it has given me a positive return. I'm not boasting merely stating my factual result. I'm well aware overconfidence can lead to hubris. Investment performance is to a large extent governed by timing, in this case I have been fortunate. Fact not boast. Th, e fact that I had a positive return, as many other BTL investors have, serves to encourage others to follow suit. That is the problem that HPC wishers have to overcome. Your economic analysis and conclusion may well be correct, but timing has not been in your favour, for all the reasons you state; low interest rates , shortage of supply, immigration, and so on and on. Anyway, I digress, the issue that provoked me to reply is your assertion that I've misused the word "salient". b. Of immaterial things, qualities, etc.: Standing out from the rest; prominent, conspicuous; often in phr. salient point (cf. A. 3). Also Psychol., standing out or prominent in consciousness. The word fits with the meaning I intended, that there was nothing new or relevant in your ripostes. Sure there was a slight divergence in meaning towards relevant. With your obvious delight in semantics you must realise that the meaning of words in the English language changes with usage. A lovely example that springs to mind is the use of the word "tart" to describe a woman. It is a derogatory term in common usage now. I understand that when originally used to describe a woman it meant a sweet thing. I found via google a programme from Woman's Hour http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2007_09_mon.shtml that covers the change in usage. I don't have time to listen just now so I'm hoping it confirms my recollection.

Average wages in Basingstoke are around the £40k mark. So for a single person that makes the cost 4 times average salary. For a couple, like many living in this area a £200k house is affordable. I don't think I suggested he should buy a share of a house. Average wages in Basingstoke are around the £40k mark, therefore the flats are not 8 times the average local salary. Do you take offence easily, or do you work at it?